Poems

As will no doubt quickly be discovered, I know little or nothing about poetry, scarcely know the difference between a Shakespearean Sonnet  and a Grocer’s Punnet.

It is a very long time since I wrote a ‘poem’. They belong to a previous part of my existence. Still, however, since I think some of them remain germane, I am (hopefully) going to post some here.

Envied

 

Chained to his balls

In a prison called ‘Man’,

What do they see

Who call him ‘free’?

Wage slave, unmanned,

To a glossy treadmill tied,

Or mortgaged to a private cross

And crucified

Smiling.

Or rat

With the strange pink tail,

Imprisoned in a maze called ‘Man’

Who ought to wonder who are these

Who envy him the scraps of cheese

That are the mouldy recompense

For life that does violence

To dignity.

by Richard V Raiment.

 

Manhood.

In an echoing, empty subway

I fall back, so as not to be

perceived a threat by she who walks

alone ahead of me.

A second moves to pass me

I step well away to the side

that doubts that might darken her frightened mind

are, as far as they can be, denied.

 

Through choice would I never strike woman,

through choice would do no woman wrong,

I cannot despise them, nor trivialise them,

perceive women weak and men strong.

I’ll not play ‘It’s a man’s world’ games,

be thus prisoned, pretend to be free,

and the thrusting, assertive world of some men

holds no welcome – nor liking – for me.

 

If manhood must be one-upmanship –

emotions suppressed to compete,

others diminished one’s self to enhance –

then the prize of the game is defeat.

It has to be hateful, so much to be feared

by those we most need to be friends,

it has to be time to reject, now, those things

on which such a manhood depends.

 

True manhood must re-write the script,

must open eyes to a new way of seeing

that it matters much less to be one kind of man

than to be fully a true human being.

 

by Richard V Raiment